Holidays
This has been my year for awakening to environmental responsibility at the personal level. Concern for my own impact has never been far from consciousness this year, and this holiday season is no exception. As I sit in my room at the B&B here in Lawrence, KS, I’m aware of the bubble of heated air we’re trapping on four sides from the winter outside, to the extent that even though it’s only 45 or so degrees outside, I’m writing this in a T-shirt and with nothing on my feet but a pair of socks. It seems that this B&B (which we did not select based on its environmental consciousness) hasn’t yet made the conversion to low-flow shower heads or toilets, and we have a full-sized refrigerator here in the room with us; I don’t know how efficient it is, but the fact that it’s almost completely empty can’t mean that this huge cold box inside an artificially heated room is helping things very much. Even the two strings of conventional lights on our Christmas tree ...
Posted on December 21, 2007 7:53:17 PM EST
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Germany and China: Importing Environmental Benefits from Developing Nations
On Day One of our yearly Christmas trip back to Kansas, I found myself sitting in J&S Coffee in Lawrence, KS without a computer in sight, reading a copy of the New York Times. I actually didn’t realize how long their articles are…three pages allow for a refreshingly in-depth discussion of the chosen topic. Anyway, one article that really caught my eye was all about the transfer of the dirtiest of industries - steel mills, coke plants, etc. - from Western nations like the US and Germany to China, entitled China Grabs West’s Smoke-Spewing Factories. This triggered some memory of a book I’ve been reading lately, called How to Live a Low-Carbon Life (by Chris Goodall). In it, Mr. Goodall talks about how Germany is currently the only EU nation making any progress toward their Kyoto-Protocol targets. His discussion provides an interesting juxtaposition with the Times article, since it just so happens that China’s insatiable appetite for additional steel-production capacity has, in ...
Posted on December 21, 2007 7:53:11 PM EST
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